"And do you suppose I should have given my ten pounds, but for being misled, for being allowed to infer that it would be expended on the distressed?" stamped the Squire. "Not a shilling of it. No money of mine shall aid in turning poor helpless creatures inside out to expose their sins, as you call it. _That's_ not charity. What the sick and the famished want is a little kindly help--and the Bible enjoins us to give it." "But most of them are such a bad lot, you know," remonstrated the young man. "All the more need they should be helped," returned the Squire; "they have bodies and souls to be saved, I suppose. Hold your silly tongue, I tell you. I should have seen to this poor sick woman myself, who is just as worthy as you are and your masters, but for their taking the case in hand. As it is she has been left to starve and die. Come along, Johnny! Benevolence Hall, indeed!" Back to Gibraltar Terrace now, the Squire fretting and fuming. He was hot and hasty, as the world knows, given to saying anything that came uppermost, justifiable or the contrary: but in this affair it did seem that something or somebody must be wrong. "Johnny," said the Squire, as the cab bowled along, waking up out of a brown study, "it seems to me that this is a serious matter of conscience. It was last Sunday evening, wasn't it, that you read the chapter in St. Matthew which tells of the last judgment?" "Tod read it, sir. I read the one that followed it." "Any way, it was one of you. In that chapter Christ charges us to relieve the poor if we would be saved--the hungry and thirsty, the sick, the naked. Now, see here, lad: if I give my alms to this new society that has sprung up, and never a stiver of it to relieve the distress that lies around me, would the blame, rest on _me_, I wonder? Should _I_ have to answer for it?" It was too complicated a question for me. But just then we drew up at Miss Kester's door. Mrs. Mapping had changed in that short time. I thought she was dying, thought so as I looked at her. There was a death-shade on the wan face, never seen but when the world is passing away. The Squire saw it also. "Yes," said Miss Kester, gravely, in answer to his whisper. "I fear it is the end." "Goodness bless me!" gasped the Squire. And he was for ordering in pretty nearly every known restorative the shops keep, from turtle-soup to calves'-foot jelly. Miss Kester shook her head. "Too late, sir; too late. A month ago it would have saved her. Now, unless I am very much mistaken, the end is at hand." Well, he was in a way. If gold and silver could revive the dying, she'd have had it. He sent me out to buy a bottle of port wine, and got Miss Kester's little apprentice to run for the nearest doctor. "Not rally again at all, you say! all stuff and nonsense," he was retorting on Miss Kester when I returned. "Here's the wine, at last! Now for a glass, Johnny."